


And when I see her move I see the Hell to pay

by vogue91



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Songfic, Unrequited Love, soulless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 17:39:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13816155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Don’t be an idiot, Spike. You’re a monster, Spike. Stay away from me, Spike.These her favourite sentences, drenched in lie the very moment she pronounced them.





	And when I see her move I see the Hell to pay

They were walking through Sunnydale’s cemetery, unsure about what to do. They had been walking through the tombstones for hours, and nothing had happened.

Spike was starting to wonder if there was an actual danger that some demon would’ve attacked them, or if it was yet another one of Mr. Giles cases of overzealousness.

“Buffy, it’s four in the morning, don’t you think that if someone was trying to kill and dismember us he would’ve already tried?” he asked the Slayer, grimacing. She stopped and turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised.

“First of all, it’s be who he want to dismember. I’m the Slayer while you, I’m sorry to say it, are the surrogate of a vampire.” she declared, spiteful. “Second, we didn’t really make an appointment. He’s got till sunrise to show.”

The vampire looked at her, he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

The desire to attack her always became sharp whenever the girl made those kind of comments. He breathed deeply, cursing that damn chip he had inside the brain.

“And you, after all, are the surrogate of a human being. But perhaps is better that we don’t go tell that around.” he replied hateful after a few moments. Buffy raised her fist, but then left it mid-air. She grinned, and shook her head.

“You’re right, Spike. It’s better that we don’t’ go tell that around.” she got closer. “Unless you want to become worm food. We both know you can’t react.” she murmured, mellifluous. The vampire growled and hit her shoulder, as to show she was wrong.

It was like his knees had suddenly given out on him, a flash of pain ran through his entire spine.

At times he convinced himself he could cure that agony, to the point of dominating it and be the vampire he once was. But everytime he was caught off guard from the torture that thing was giving him, no matter how small, how insignificant it was.

He fell heavily on his knees, massaging his temples. In between the spasms, he saw Buffy’s legs moving.

She went away, leaving him alone to his torments.

 

~

 

He went back to the crypt cursing. He hated when she acted that way, when she kept lying to herself, pretending she didn’t care at all about him.

When she was capable of making him doubt it was true at all. But Spike couldn’t be wrong, he knew she was a part of his darkness now.

She came at night, like the moon, without the shining light of it. The days passed, and she looked more like those demons that she didn’t fight with the same passion she had before.

She had come back from Heaven, but she seemed to have spent her imprisonment into the worst bowels of Hell. Spike kept watching her, trying to see in her a warmth lost forever.

He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he had realized he felt attracted to her. Nor why his mind kept finding excuses, hiding words that would’ve shown too clearly that it wasn’t a common infatuation.

Not that it was love. It would’ve been more correct to call it obsession, an obsession that was making Spike weaker than he already was.

He had started hating the Slayer when he had realized that looking into her eyes made him feel alive, for the first time in decades. He spent nights walking up and down his crypt, trying to shut his instincts up, yet doing nothing but incite them, tormenting himself with that face, small and insignificant, that didn’t leave him alone.

 

_[The sin of Eve she has in her I know so well]_

And she knew. She knew what she could cause, she knew by heart all the twisted recesses of the vampire’s thoughts. But she kept going down her road, without thinking about consequences, about what could’ve happened between them. She just went there at night, when the pain became the most unbearable, and she asked him just for his body.

Spike knew why. There was nothing else in him that she would’ve been interested in. A heart that had stopped beating and a soul consumed in the too much blood spilled by his hand couldn’t have anything attractive for a woman like her, who had decided to pretend she still had a pureness that didn’t belong to her anymore. She lied to herself, telling that what she looked for in Spike was a momentary diversion, something to make her forget Heaven and threw her back violently on Earth, if not lower, in that Hell that were the blankets in the crypt, hot merely with an ephemeral and volatile passion.

He punched the wall, likely the only thing he could still assault without repercussions. He looked around, knowing that the chaos around him was nothing like what he felt inside.

He grinned, shaking his head. Before she had come so arrogantly in his life, he had forgotten he owed something to be called an inner reality. But her, that damn little girl, had been able to charm him, and now she was regretting it.

_Don’t be an idiot, Spike. You’re a monster, Spike. Stay away from me, Spike._

These her favourite sentences, drenched in lie the very moment she pronounced them.

Did she want for him to stay away? He had tried that, and he had also managed it. Then she had come back, unable to find any comfort in those she called friends. Paradoxically, she looked in him for an absolution that she thought she couldn’t get.

The absolution for all the thoughts running through her hear, the absolution for what she had kept a secret from everyone. And, Spike was sure of it, the absolution for that pointless hate she felt toward everything in that world, first of all herself.

 

_[This gipsy girl, is there a soul beneath her skin?]_

The following night, as to show that his worries weren’t just the delirium of a madman, she was there, sitting on a gravestone as if that place belonged to her. As if all she needed to survive was the threat of a grave on her head. Spike found the image pretty grotesque, if he thought a grave had been her home a few weeks before.

He grabbed rabidly a bottle of rum, bringing it to his lips. When he looked at her, he saw the disgust on Buffy’s face, as usual.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Well? What, know I’m not even free to drink rum? I thought I was denied only blood.” he told her, sarcastic.

“Free to do as you please. Just like I’m free to express my repugnance.” was her answer, dry and harsh, as if for her it was somewhat of a mission humiliating and belittling him.

He got closer to her, hitting a hand against the wall behind her.

“Your repugnance?” he hissed. “Buffy, you’re not that much better than me. Not anymore.” he brushed a finger over her face, almost imperceptibly. “Even though I have to admit that this side of you doesn’t leave me unresponsive, but I figure you already knew that.” he murmured, before she kicked him away.

“You have no right, Spike.” she said, plain and simple. She had lost the faculty of getting mad at him, rage yet another thing far from her.

“Really? And if I have no rights, who’s going to point out the destruction you’re walking towards?” he said, spitting the words as if they were poison. She got closer, cautious, her eyes mortally serious.

“You don’t know a thing, Spike. Nothing about how I feel, nothing of what goes through my mind, nothing that has happened to me. Get this into your thick head: we’ve got nothing to talk about, so if my presence here causes you some issues, you better tell me now. I _hate_ you.” she hissed. The vampire opened his eyes wide, even though he didn’t find that her argument made any sense.

“It’s not true you hate me, Buffy. An half can’t hate what makes it whole And that’s what I am for you, whether you admit it or not. I’m what keeps you afloat, what links you from darkness to the world. Even though I have to admit that my world is not the one you’d want to belong to.” he answered, with a calm that surprised him too. She shook her head and closed her eyes. He watched her taking a few deep breaths, before speaking again.

“I’m a shadow, Spike. You’re flesh and bones, and can’t understand how I feel about myself right now. You’ve suffered death like I did, but the huge difference is that you’ve never left the earth. In earth, I’ve been buried, and you can’t even begin to imagine what has meant for me being torn away from that cradle... even if it was death.” it had been a long time since he had last heard her talking like this, like it was the truth, a pure expression of those remains of soul she still had left.

Buffy suffered, and Spike was aware of that.

But the change was right now she knew it too.

 

_[And dies she bears the cross of all our human sin]_

She suffered for the silence she had closed herself in, for the happy gazes of Xander, Willow and all the others, convinced they had gifted her a miracle, ignorant of the truth.

He went toward her slowly, as if she was an animal that he didn’t want to scare.

“Buffy... I now I can’t understand any of it. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t let me at least try.” he murmured, regretting immediately to have lost his harshness so easily. But he couldn’t remediate, her look was disarming, adorned with all the affliction she had collected in time.

She didn’t change his expression, and took a step back.

“Because there’s still a human being under my skin, Spike. And sooner or later I’ll manage to get back the part of me that I’ve lost. “ she looked at him straight in the eyes, almost violently. “You don’t have any humanity and will never be able to build it, no matter how hard you try.”

Spike lowered his eyes, aware that what she was saying was the pure and bare truth.

He had nothing to lose while he kept living his dissolute life, made of tricks. But her...

 

_[For want of her I know I’d give my soul to sell]_

He realized it would’ve been selfish allowing her to stay like this forever, to become that sacrilegious creature that hid in her, without giving her a chance to come back. Taking her into that dimension where she had lived so long that she didn’t even remember where she came from.

“Go away.” he hissed, shielding himself behind his hate to hide something he would’ve never wanted for her to see.

“Spike...” she whispered, taking an uncertain step forward. He kept her away.

“Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear you anymore. I’ve run out of time and...” he grinned, broken. “You’ve clearly run out of it too. I suppose in these circumstances it’s polite to say that we’ll be parting ways, isn’t it?” her face, sharp like a thousand blades penetrating his flesh, stared at him long before she decided to leave the crypt once and for all.

Again, she was leaving. That sad habit of hers was starting to leave him unharmed. But he wasn’t deluding himself. He knew that, the trauma of truth gone, they would’ve met again. Sunnydale was too small, the cemetery was too small, his crypt was too small.

But at least he had granted himself a few days of peace, without torturing himself with her presence, without her own existence causing him guilt, as she had been so good in making him believe.

_I’m a vampire. I’m a creature of the night, I’m dead. And sooner or later she’ll come back to life for real, leaving me alone with a bitter taste in my mouth._

He would’ve given anything for them to find a way to be bound in something other than the senses, the carnal bond they had shared too many times.

Her, that had made him feel not thing, not animal, but _man_. Just so that she could then treat him like the worst of beasts.

And now, who was him to allow himself to hope again?

His eyes turned off to this awareness. He wasn’t going to allow Buffy to hurt him in such a brutal way.

Never again.

 

_[The sin of Eve she had in her I know so well_

_For want of her I know I’d give my soul to sell_

_This gipsy girl is there a soul beneath her skin_

_And dies she bear the cross of all our human sin.]_


End file.
